Here. There.

Life’s Answers & Other Things

After I got my degree in December, I had the opportunity to be very selective about where I would go to work. The months that followed were, not surprisingly, very boring. I watched a lot of Netflix, read a lot of fiction, and eventually decided to volunteer at a local military museum until the right job came along. Then I got stir-crazy and cried a lot (mostly out of boredom and from suffering a vitamin D deficiency during this winter that seems to be never-ending).

That most recent bout of crying led me to consider pursuing a master’s degree. Actually, the conversation I had with myself (and my husband) went a little like this:

Will you ever be happy with just a bachelor’s degree? NO.

Will you ever be able to work in a field you really love without a master’s degree? NO.

It was that simple. I needed a master’s degree. But I also needed a job to pay for it, so the job hunt got a little difficult because…well, how selective can you really be when you don’t have the master’s degree you need to get the job you want? The answer: NOT VERY.

What do you really want to do? This was where I got stuck.

I flip-flopped between working in a museum (but without all the technicalities of archiving and grant-writing), working with teens, or simply living in a room full of books. After a few weeks of perusing the job boards available to the public through the American Library Association (ALA), the American Historical Association (AHA),and various humanities organizations, and speaking to some MLIS-carrying friends of mine, the answer was becoming clearer. It just wasn’t clear enough.

Then I was called in to interview for a position in our public library. When I was asked why I wanted to work there, I rambled on about my work at the 45th Infantry Museum’s library and how I really enjoyed being part of the community project (without having to be the face of a project itself). I think I mentioned that I was going to start working on my MLIS in the fall, too. I genuinely enjoy outreach work, local history, and, let’s be honest, being around books. Suddenly the answer was very, very clear.

Two weeks later I got the job. A lot of it, I think, had to do with me wanting to fuse my two favorite things into a single attainable goal: my love for history and my love for books. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be preparing my application for graduate school because I just can’t seem to get enough of this college thing.

So in this day and age of modern technology, online catalogs, and our overall ability to Google just about anything we want (and some things we don’t want), keep in mind that card catalogs still exist and that they’re really, really cool. Thanks to World War II, I’m already very familiar with works filed under MDS 940.53 through 940.54. Luckily for you, you can Google that.

In other news:

There have been a few 80-degree afternoons scattered amongst the snow storms and overall shitty days. I saw some henbit growing in someone’s yard earlier in the week and after becoming absurdly excited at the show of color (even though it’s considered a weed), I went ahead and put in my garden seed order. Now spring has to happen. I’ve already paid for it.

I finally found some friends who are willing to play Scrabble with me during my husband’s game nights.

We have a futon! It’s a beautiful cranberry color but you’d never know it. These dogs think everything we buy is meant to be a dog bed. Except the dog beds, of course. The futon is currently covered in a paisley fitted sheet. Sigh…

I decided to treat myself to a quarterly book box through Book Riot. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, you pay a set price (Book Riot’s is $50) and you receive a box of surprise goodies. It’s like Christmas every three months up in here! Here’s my loot. (And to think, I’d been shopping around for a book-themed coffee mug and blammo!! It showed up just like that. Also, advanced reader copies of books, y’all.):